Artist Statement Some Betrayals
"I have always been fascinated by the relationships in our world. What starts out as vision soon deteriorates as greed, leaving only a sense of chaos or the prospect of a new beginning! To escape the shallow culture of a materialistic understanding of life, I go inside myself to find what lies deep. I transform the retrieved heart into images to give back what I explored in the process.
Relationship with the places and people I have lived with remain with me as an image of wholeness. I wonder about how these places have been altered to conform to the changes the world has undergone since I stood there as a child and a young woman. My own intricate patterns have altered with becoming a woman and a painter. As part of that change I continuously explore and experiment. I am not interested in depicting the obvious that is often comprehended as reality. Reality in that sense does not represent how I understand the world. Instead I want to mingle inside out. I want to see an image as its collage, layer by layer, appearing, disappearing and maintaining the contrast that our life carries at so many levels. These are my images, the reflections of my mind while playing with the fertile confusion with vision and without manipulation. Art and resistance are the two entwined DNA strands of creativity for me. My aim is not to make art but to shape reality, not to show the world but to change it altogether. I have my disagreements with representational art and also selling art for the purpose of decorating walls. I would rather indulge in escaping from the prison of the art world and apply creativity to the engineering of social movements. I do not belong to any institution or a group but an affinity of people who recognize the beauty of collective creative resistance. My recent work is a manifestation of personal self, social-political activities and abomination faced by humanity. I see social political issues as segments of a whole, defined and redefined in layers and dimensions. I would never like to be the judge but penetrate at deeper levels to be a witness and a participant. In all the pieces I have strived to highlight an eclipsed journey of emotions, which often depicts the oscillating conditions of women between integrity, grace, benediction, isolation, oppression and struggle for a life liberated from fear. The figures dance a metaphorical element in compositions reflecting emotional landscape of the mind mingled with mystery. Here, among many other themes that I choose to incarnate, my focus is particularly on the sensitive portrayal of the weak in any society, especially women and children. The works mostly question the place of a human being, beyond the aesthetic representation of body; I try to observe how our society reveals discrimination against the weak. Many things continue to offend the sensibilities, while at the same time, weaker are subjected to extreme exploitation. I endure to probe and aspire to the value of a human life and revolution at all levels geared toward fighting oppression, inequality and discrimination so as to break boundaries to encourage dialogue. By encountering and recognizing the hypocrisies of society, its injustice and unequal structures, I transform some expressions on the canvas, hoping for essential changes and freeing the mind and spirit from inner turmoil, intellectual suppression, and injustice that confines a person specially women in a South Asian society. I love oil the most as my medium. I experiment with other media but the final complete piece is always in oils. I feel more in control with this medium. It satisfies my hunger for the image to be exactly like I would want it to be born. With each birth I realize that I would cease to be, if I don’t paint." Faiza Khan |  
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